Man-Stalking

onFebruary 13, 2014

By Anonymous

Friends don’t let friends man-stalk. They do it for you.

Jo and I have been best friends since our junior year in high school. Now in our 20s, we’re still there for each other. Amazingly, a lot of the elements of our friendship are the same… now just with a grownup twist. And this includes man-stalking. I’m not talking about Obsessed, Lifetime movie-level stalking. You ladies know what I mean… the ex you’re curious about, or the guy you’re talking to but aren’t sure if he’s talking to anyone else. What do you do? You recruit your bestie to man stalk. Jo and I always had each other’s backs when a man-stalk was in order. Like when my junior year boyfriend started being distant and wasn’t returning my calls (this was before we had cell phones)… who donned a hoodie and picked me up to do an after school drive-by to see if the jerk was out or actually home ignoring me? My Jo did. And yup, his car was in the driveway—so the calls were indeed going unanswered. Things ended a week later. However, without Jo’s man stalk, how long would that sham of a relationship have gone on for?

Post-college, we became a bit more sophisticated. I like to call it the reverse man-stalk… make them come to you. Jo was talking to this guy, and things were lukewarm. We suspected he may have been seeing someone else, so we needed to act fast. So, I did what any friend would do… I went on Google, found a photo of a (believably) hot guy, and made a fake Facebook profile. Monday mornings “he” would post on her wall about what a great time they had over the weekend, and later in the week “he” would write about looking forward to seeing her. Believe me, there is nothing like a fictitious social network profile to put fire under a man’s ass. Or so we thought. In the end, Jo’s lukewarm relationship petered out as well. Ok, but that’s beside the point. The point? No one should have to succumb to her guilty desire to man-stalk alone. You just feel crazy. What’s not crazy? Having your friend suggest and carry it out for you.

I’m Miranda Beverly-Whittemore. FriendStories grew out of my novel Bittersweet, and the girlhood friendship central to that story. Girlhood friendships can be passionate, secretive, playful, brutal, and more. They are how we discover who we want to be.